Addicts are not only those bonded to drugs, alcohol or abusive and destructive behaviors. An addict can be anyone that allows a person, place, desire, activity, or thing to overwhelm and overpower all else; to dramatically disrupt the balance. Who among us does not have something in their lives that takes more precedence than necessary and has the potential to send the natural order of our days a tad off kilter and detrimentally alter our objective perceptions?
This current of thought was startled to the point of flow by a conversation I had over the phone last night with one of my oldest friends about the current welfare of another who, for the second time in nine months is hospitalized and in a battle for his life. The genesis of his most recent medical crisis can be traced back to his long years of alcoholism with the only exception this time being the unfortunate additional hurdle of an addiction to pain medication.
In our youth, and up until a couple of years ago, this guy was the heart, life and soul of every gathering, large or small. His humor and all-consuming passion for stirring the pool of pedestrian thought and diving head-first into the shallow waters of limitation and caution just to prove they were survivable were legendary. No one could imagine a celebration without him. Today he is in the raw throes of the DT's and trapped in the dementia that will hold him for days until his bones are once more clean.
And so last night as I watched the slow, methodical spinning of the ceiling fan above my bed, it brought my mind to a place of memory and the half-grown hopes of my youth; over-charged as they were with the surety of there being countless tomorrows full of enduring friendships, winning smiles and successes all heightened by the beguiling glaze of celebrations with all their concomitant thrills.
Thirty-five or forty years ago the idea of managing the insecurities of adolescence and our teen years by lacing them with periods of drug and/or alcohol use seemed perfectly reasonable given the undeniable tenor of rebellion and the climate of unrest and counterculturalism so pervasive in the seventies.
Thirty-five years ago our bodies could withstand two or three consecutive sleepless nights and still manage a solid 'C' on a mid-term, too. Back then it was only the truly reckless among us who lost at the game. Most of us knew when to quit testing the limits and go get some orange juice and a bowl of cornflakes.
And in time, most of us reluctantly learned how to face and solve our problems and not merely just cauterize our pain.
Or did we?
When I first moved back to the Midwest five years ago after a thirty-two-year absence, I was in heaven because at no other point in my life had I connected to others as profoundly and intimately as I had to those I'd known during the time I'd lived here decades earlier- from ages thirteen to twenty-two.
Those years, already so naturally vested in some of the most radically absolute and life-forming rites of passage; were made even more indelible by the fact that I genuinely adored every one of those friends marking their journey with me at that time.
I suppose it had to have been a bond preexisting life because there is no logical explanation as to why such devotion would endure in my heart decades after the story began and almost as long after it ended; but whatever karmic thread wove them so indelibly into my soul all those many years ago was strong enough to reel me back to where they still resided now.
Many of my friends have survived our crushing inexperience and the reckless test drive of wanton experimentation emerging into adulthood with only minor scars and a few major but decidedly cautionary tales to pass down to their own tempestuous teenage offspring.
However, many others have not and while no longer taking headers off Yamaha 350's into the rear windows of parked Volkswagons, they were still enslaved by the craven lust of an overly-productive party gene with the only difference being its present characterization.
Through the inherently ordinary and substantially disillusioning unraveling of time, the need for infusing each mundane moment with a celebratory cast had now become bound by the lesser, but far more desperate and somber imperative of escape.
And as I lay there in the dark of my room last night, paddling my way back in time, I began not only to examine my own patterns and expectations and how they still seduce and beckon me toward the rabbit hole of denial; but also how inwardly I still seek some sort of calculable relief from the often grinding dysphoria that shadows even the most ordinary day with a sense of dread thinking, "This can't be all there is."
I suppose I have been fortunate, gifted it would seem with a constitutional grace that has been afforded me by design, as well as by an intrinsic fortitude and sensitivity to guilt; and because of these things I have never met a substance I felt I couldn't live without, so addiction in the traditional sense has never been a personal issue for me.
However, that doesn't mean that the huge desire for escape and relief has been cowed into abeyance. I still salivate over the various pain medications that have come through this house after the surgical procedures of both my husband and youngest daughter, and it is only through an overwhelming sense of guilt and an even stronger desire to avoid depravity that I have refrained from indulging myself in those pressed-powdered get-a-ways. Besides, yielding to the chemical cravings promising escape with my own beloved son having become his own victim by such means, would be like sharing a gun with two bullets and passing it between us; a question of who killed whom.
But it has been a struggle at times, no doubt. When you come of age having flavored all your teen angst and antics with psychedelics, downers, uppers and everything in between, happiness becomes distorted after having been wrapped in the gilded illusion of euphoria. Of course, this is not true for everyone, but it is for some; and it certainly is for me. They call it "getting high" for a reason.
Aside from any genetic predisposition to eschew chronic dependency (which would be pure luck as alcoholism exists on both sides of my family....although not in my own parents, thankfully), I can also count pure vanity as an ally. Why would I want to daily indulge in a recreational drug that would give me the munchies and heighten an appetite that is already overly-healthy and demanding? Alcohol and drug use are never touted for their beautifying effects and image erosion by natural means is daunting enough to accept and ameliorate. The last thing I want to do would be to hasten the declivitous process.
I have never been much of a drinker, but when we first moved back to town, there was a lot of socializing, celebrating and hosting of parties as I reconnected with my old friends and introduced them to my family and my life and vice versa. I began drinking nearly every weekend because we were either going out, doing the Happy Hour thing or entertaining at home. Enhancing the night was a given. I learned how to party that way when I was fourteen.
After the first year the drinking the had initially been contained to Friday and Saturday nights had been expanded to include Thursdays; sometimes Wednesdays. It was around that time that noticed something. I noticed that, aside from the twenty pounds I had gained without half trying, I was becoming less and less content with life when NOT drinking; and, although I never followed through, I found myself thinking about how early was 'too early' to have that vodka and whether I would be able to slip some into a plastic water bottle to drink from while I was going through the mechanical and agonizingly boring process of preparing dinner.
I'm not sure what triggered it but at that point I got wise, tied a knot in the loop of intoxication, took myself to the gym and also renewed my commitment and efforts towards unity with the Divine, discovery of Self and my obligation towards others.
But what became obvious by today's dawn is that we are all addicts of one sort or another until we let go of all attachments and priorities that are not right here in the present moment; that Be Here Now principle. There truly is no better place to be, and it is the only place where discontent and unrest can be adequately dissolved by the energy of being fully focused and present to whatever comes your way.
It isn't always easy and often unsuccessful but it is always the better choice.
I know lots of addicts. There are the ones in obvious trouble with alcohol or pain medications or other substances, but there are also the seemingly innocuous kinds: the ones addicted to perfection, physical or otherwise; the ones addicted to food; the ones addicted to the past; work; gossip; religion; television; sports, viewing or participation; and probably the most toxic, damaging, saddest and most difficult addiction of all: the addiction to denial.
At one time or another and on some level, we all take a hit from that cunning rig, but in chronic users you can recognize it because it is loaded with exceptions and excuses and leaves telltale tracks of unreconciled regrets and wasted time all up and down the appendages of the life.
You can't reason with addicts of denial because of their ardent belief that the are the exception, and as long as they are grafted onto this toxic delusion, they will remain stagnating in the refuse of the dark present they don't see and unable to grasp salvation in the healthy future they won't survive without.
I won't abandon those friends of mine mired down by both dependency and denial and neither will I give up hope; but I won't participate in their undoing either. Whatever it was that compelled me fall in love with these beautiful souls and to return to this place has put me in a position to witness the various degrees of self-sabotage for a reason and it also compels me to remain; but with one striking difference:
When I initially left this place I was still blithely tethered to the bones of dissatisfaction and despair seeking only to loosen the binding with pills and potions and temporary anodynes as they circled the restless waters of the friend ship. Now, thirty-two years later, I have returned with a sturdy lifeline and an entire fleet of prayerful intentions strapped to my heart, and I'll continue to throw them out there as long as necessary. I know my friends would do it for me, and in many stunning ways they are.
That is the wonderful thing about lifelines. They work both ways.
